Timeless Aida Plays On The Heartstrings

March 15, 2005|By Bill Hirschman Staff Writer

Voices soar, dancers twirl, stone pillars glide by and music envelops the audience as everybody from the ensemble to the lighting crew brings their A-level game to Aida, the Actors' Playhouse's lush mounting of Elton John and Tim Rice's musical.

Superior in every department to the Playhouse's other Disney offering of the season, Beauty and the Beast, this show connects with the heartstrings. A few curmudgeons will wish the talent and imagination had been lavished on a more deserving property, but fewer can quibble with the result.

Unabashedly embracing a contemporary sensibility, this retelling offers an angst-among-the-Ankhs vision of the second best-known story of star-crossed lovers in which everyone ends up dead. It's likely Verdi didn't contemplate such themes as civil rights and father-son alienation, and The Gods Love Nubia sounds more like a gospel roof-raiser than anything else.

Radames, an Egyptian warrior long promised to the king's daughter Amneris, falls in love with the captured Nubian princess Aida. A love triangle worthy of All My Children is explored as the inevitable tragedy closes in.

The comedy comes from wink-wink cultural anachronisms, such as when Aida fondles fabric in a bazaar with the line: "I'll say one thing, you Egyptians sure know your thread count."

It all screams Disney with a highly polished, politically correct, manipulative button-pushing libretto, Hallmark-card lyrics and a procession of self-conscious pop anthems, ballads and torch songs.

But director David Arisco triumphs in coaxing affecting performances from everyone, wringing genuine humanity from the by-the-numbers material.

Desmon N. Walker's Aida exudes defiance, pride, internal conflict and undying love with a soulful voice. Christopher A. Kent imbues the stalwart hero with an appealing vulnerability as he searches for his true place in the world, a part that otherwise would have become a Donny Osmond cartoon. Melanie Penn deftly embodies the comically spoiled Valley Girl princess who grows into maturity before our eyes.

With the possible exception of Floyd Collins, this may be the finest work yet from the entire creative team, almost all Carbonell winners. Eric Alsford's pit band swells with the muscular, sinuous score. You can hear every word, every note in Nate Rausch's perfectly balanced sound, the obvious miking notwithstanding. Patrick Tennent's lighting mirrors shifting moods while evoking myriad locales. Barbara Flaten's choreography is a personal best, especially in the orgiastic Dance of the Robe, and she finally has a strong corps of dancers uniformly capable of executing her vision.

M.P. Amico's inventive scenery is simultaneously as ancient as stone and as modern as the trendy wares along the Miracle Mile. His sliding panels of faux sandstone and dark fabric conjure an interior decorator using an antiquity theme to adorn a corporate boardroom atop a skyscraper.

Mary Lynne Izzo's costumes are marvels: shimmering gowns for Amneris, futuristic outfits for the warriors and especially the patchwork royal robe that adoring slaves make for Aida, which Arisco and Flaten ingeniously use to envelop the entire stage.

A road show swung through here a few seasons ago with a transcendent Aida in Paulette Ivory, but it had little soul overall. You may well think this version superior.

Bill Hirschman can be reached at 954-356-4513 or bhirschman@sun-sentinel.com.